Pharmaceutical industry is ‘under threat’ from Labour, says ex-Labour health minister Ara Darzi
Britain’s pharmaceutical industry is “under threat” from a Jeremy Corbyn government, according to a former Labour health minister.
Baron Ara Darzi criticised Corbyn’s plan to set-up a state-owned and state-regulated pharmaceutical company to prevent drug price hikes as “a blunderbuss remedy” and “reckless”.
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The policy would ensure the government body could reproduce patented pharmaceuticals if they became too expensive.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Darzi – who was a health minister under Gordon Brown – said the policy would crimp innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.
“Such a move would threaten the entire pharmaceutical industry and Britain’s world-leading role in innovation.
“Forcing pharmaceutical companies to surrender their intellectual property so that their products could be copied — a process known as compulsory licensing — would discourage companies from launching new medicines and slow the research pipeline, curbing the flow of innovative drugs becoming available.”
Darzi also said that the policy could lead to higher drug prices as firms may hike up prices after launching products for fear the government will eventually take the patent off them.
Darzi was Labour peer from 2007 to July this year when he resigned the party whip over its leadership’s handling of antisemitism allegations.
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He was health minister under Brown from 2007 to 2009, before being appointed to Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council.
The Iraq-born surgeon currently holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at Imperial College London.